THE POETICS OF AFFIRMATIVE FATALISM

196 Pages·2017·0.89 MB·English

by  Jacob M Barto

THE POETICS OF AFFIRMATIVE FATALISM:
LIFE, DEATH, AND MEANING-MAKING
IN GOETHE, NIETZSCHE, AND HESSE

by
JACOB MATTHEW BARTO

A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Department of German and Scandinavian
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

September 2017
DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE

Student: Jacob Matthew Barto

Title: The Poetics of Affirmative Fatalism: Life, Death, and Meaning-Making in Goethe,
Nietzsche, and Hesse

This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of German and
Scandinavian by:

Michael Stern Chair
Kenneth Calhoon Core Member
Alexander Mathäs Core Member
Mark Unno Institutional Representative

and

Sara D. Hodges Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School

Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School.

Degree awarded September 2017.

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© 2017 Jacob Matthew Barto

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DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

Jacob Matthew Barto

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of German and Scandinavian

September 2017

Title: The Poetics of Affirmative Fatalism: Life, Death, and Meaning-Making in Goethe,
Nietzsche, and Hesse

The fundamental role that tragedy has played in the development of European
philosophy and, by extension, psychology, has in part been due to its inextricability from
an understanding of human life, facilitating its many transformations alongside major
shifts in the political and social landscapes where it plays out. This dissertation draws a
thread from the traditions of tragedy and German Trauerspiel through the nineteenth
century and into the twentieth, focusing on the legacy of the tragic as it lived on in
Nietzsche's psychological philosophy and was taken up by Hermann Hesse in his literary
explorations of spiritual development and the fate of the German soul. Affirmative
fatalism is the conceptual name for a tendency that I observe specifically in German
literature from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, finding its clearest
articulations in Goethe’s Faust and Nietzsche’s amor fati, and then becoming thematized
itself in Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel. This study illustrates how ultimately in Hesse’s texts the
sharp distinction is drawn between affirmative fatalism in its authentic sense – a love of
and dynamic engagement with fate – and the passive fatalism of authoritarianism – a
prostration before a prescribed fate, the obsequiousness of which is veiled in the language
and pageantry of patriotic heroism.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

NAME OF AUTHOR: Jacob Matthew Barto

GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:

University of Oregon, Eugene
University of Arizona, Tucson

DEGREES AWARDED:

Doctor of Philosophy, German, 2017, University of Oregon
Master of Arts, German, 2010, University of Oregon
Bachelor of Arts, German Studies, 2008, University of Arizona

AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:

German Romanticism
German Realism
German Cinema
Critical Theory

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of German and Scandinavian, University
of Oregon, Eugene, 2008-2017

Language Instructor, Deutsche Sommerschule am Pazifik, Portland State
University, 2017

GRANTS, AWARD, AND HONORS:

Phillip Hansen Graduate Fellowship in German, University of Oregon, 2015

Astrid M. Williams Graduate Fellowship in German, University of Oregon, 2013

Graduate School Research Award in German, University of Oregon, 2013

Phillip Hansen Graduate Fellowship in German, University of Oregon, 2012

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PUBLICATIONS:

“Die Politik der Mehrdeutigkeit,” translation, in Journal Phänomenologie 39,
Vienna: 2013

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I must first thank Professors Kenneth Calhoon, Alexander Mathäs, and Mark
Unno for their support of this project and patience with me throughout the process. I must
also thank my advisor, Professor Michael Stern, for his guidance and mentorship over the
last seven years as well as his unflagging faith in me and my project. I would like to
thank my family, especially my parents, who, despite not really understanding what it is
that literary scholars do, have never stopped encouraging me to chase my dreams. It
would be a crime against decency not to thank my many colleagues and friends: Chet
Lisiecki, the best Kumpel a Kerl could have, for his enduring friendship and intellectual
support, his bright laugh, his heart of gold, and his uncanny ability to calm my fried
nerves; Dana Rognlie, for her tireless enthusiasm, her love of knowledge, her
unconditional companionship; the so-called Faust Club – Josiah Simon, Nicholas
Reynolds, and Robert Mottram – for their abiding friendship, their humor, and their
insight; Judith Lechner, for her wisdom and musical inspiration; Miriam Sessions, for
goading me on like only a lifelong friend can; Adele Larson, for never giving up the
enlightenment and levity that comes from the play with words; and innumerable others
without whom this life could not justify itself to all eternity.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………..... 9
II. THE CONCEPT OF AFFIRMATIVE FATALISM …………………… 15
What is Affirmative Fatalism? ………………………………………… 15
A Brief Historical Survey ……………………………………………… 20
What Lies Ahead ……………………………………………………… 38
III. NIETZSCHE’S TRAGIC RELIGIOSITY ……………………………. 42
Introduction …………………………………………………………… 42
Nihilism and Necessary Fictions ……………………………………… 48
Der Augenblick: On Time and the Modern Concept of Fate ………….. 58
Amor fati and Grace as “History’s Antidote” …………………………. 71
Conclusion …………………………………………………………….. 80
IV. HERMANN HESSE’S MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY ………………. 83
Introduction ……………………………………………………………. 83
Zarathustras Wiederkehr: Risky Reincarnations ……………………… 87
“Vom Steine stäuben Stücke”: God, Fate, and the Self ……………….. 94
Unity and Devotion ……………………………………………………. 107
Conclusion …………………………………………………………….. 121
V. DAS GLASPERLENSPIEL AND THE POETICS OF AFFIRMATIVE
FATALISM …………………………………………………………….. 123
Introduction ……………………………………………………………. 123
Der Regenmacher ……………………………………………………… 127
Der Beichtvater ………………………………………………………… 142
Indischer Lebenslauf …………………………………………………… 157
Castalian Knecht ……………………………………………………….. 167
VI. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................... 187
REFERENCES CITED………............................................................................ 193

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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

With rare exception, tragedy as a genre is lost to modernity, and its reception has
become increasingly difficult as the colloquial use of the word (especially in an English-
speaking context) has emptied it of its former significance. Everything sad and
lamentable is conflated in the term, but this is, as any literary pedant would have one
know, hardly a requisite of tragedy. Yet the tragic has not left us. And not only has it
undergone transformations across compositional forms, but the understanding of the
tragic imprinted itself so thoroughly on the thinkers of the nineteenth century – most
importantly, in the context of this study, on Nietzsche – that it remains a key aspect of
western philosophies and theories of psychology. As far as European thought and
literature are concerned, tragedy plays a fundamental role in the conception of the
individual human subject. And as far as European thinkers preoccupied with the
structures and problems of subjectivity are concerned, the German philosophical and
literary tradition is indispensable.
The emergence and prominence of the individual in Enlightenment thought is
inextricable from the development of capitalism in Europe. Hence does Goethe's Faust
serve as a launching point for the exploration of affirmative fatalism in modern German
literature. This most legendary figure, whose apostasy is not only religious but
thoroughly political, prefigures the coming crisis of meaning and faith embodied in
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. The spiritual rebellion against God and all gods is mirrored in
the individualist and capitalist rebellion against absolutism, but even these are haunted by
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a faith – in the self and in capital to produce a sense of meaning. No longer handed down
from a higher power, meaning for the modern subject issues from within itself. But the
essence, nature, and function of the self become a grand series of questions for Faust and
Zarathustra, both of whom are also consumed by a tragic pathos, thus placing the
question of the individual self squarely within the tradition of tragic literature,
preoccupied as it is with sacrifice. And it was Nietzsche above all who opened a
proverbial vat of worms with his writing, inviting the next generation to languish over
these problems while confronted with an unbelievably fast-changing and disorienting
social and political reality.
Hermann Hesse was one such author of that immediate post-Nietzsche generation.
He indisputably ranks among the most celebrated, translated, and widely read German
authors in the world, but for decades has been more or less neglected by literary
scholarship – and perhaps precisely because of his popularity. While universities, in their
tireless search for revenue streams, seem incapable of resisting the Faustian temptation to
indulge every fresh and fleeting interest in new media with minimal historical distance
and hindsight, literary scholars, expressing a need for a contrived intellectual austerity,
have embraced a reactionary attitude toward Hesse's nearly century-old corpus. It is a
tragedy of its own kind, to be sure: once beloved in the United States by hippies and
university students as an author of the radical search for one's authentic self, Hesse has
become a name muttered or chuckled with a tinge of nostalgia by that same generation,
grown and jaded, his work regarded as trite feel-goodery that has lost its utility as
intellectual capital. As is the wont of tragedy, a sacrifice has been made. "Ah, yes, I read
Hesse when I was younger," says the older man, well-dressed, stably employed, wedded,
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